There is nothing to surprise us in all these facts. Recently near the Yenesei River, in the heart of Siberia, were found bronze daggers, hatchets and bridle bits (Fig. 71), all bearing witness in the beauty of their workmanship to a more advanced state of civilization than the Lake Dwellings or megalithic monuments farther south. Many of them are ornamented with figures of animals, so that at an epoch less remote, it is true, than the one we have been considering, but still far removed from our own, we find that there was an intelligent race, with artistic tastes, living in a country now so intensely cold as to be uninhabitable to all but a few miserable nomad Tartars.
At Spiennes, near Mons, a field was discovered, known as the CAMP DES CAYAUX, strewn with flints, some uncut, others hewn, together with knives and hatchets innumerable. There were also centres of manufacture at Hoxne and Brandon, in England, at Bellaria in Bologna, and at Rome on the Tiburtine Way. At Ponte-Molle, where worked flints were discovered for the first time in Italy a few years ago, a workshop was found, remarkable for the great number of stags’ antlers, from which the middle part had been removed, doubtless to be used as handles for tools. M. de Rossi, who gives us these details, thinks that this station was inhabited in the Paleolithic period. In the settlement of Concise have been found not only stone implements, but a great many articles made of bone, so that this place was evidently an important manufacturing centre. Knives, stilettos, and arrow heads were turned out here, and in the hands of skilful workmen the tusks of the boars, which abounded at this time in Switzerland, were converted into excellent chisels.
FIGURE 71
Bronze objects found at Krasnojarsk (Siberia).
To name the districts where tools were manufactured in prehistoric times in France would be to give a list of all the departments. In the commune of Saint-Julien du Saut we find a large manufactory where every division of the Stone age is fully represented, from the time of the simply chipped hatchet to that of the polished implement of rare perfection. Everything bears witness to the prolonged residence of man in a neighborhood which offered the attraction of vast deposits of chalk with bands of flint that supplied alike weapons and tools. Amongst others, we must name the so-called ATELIER DE LA TREICHE, near Toul, which extends for an area of about a hundred acres, that of Bonaruc, near Dax; surrounded by waste lands covered with a scanty vegetation; that of Rochebertier (Charente), which probably dates from the Madeleine period; and that of Ecorche-Boeuf, near Perigueux. The Abbe Cochet tells us of an atelier in the Aulne valley, and Maurice Sand of another near La Chatre, where we meet with the most ancient traces of man in Berry. In the fields, near an alignment not far from Autun, were picked up numbers of hatchets of bard rock, barbed arrows, flakes of flint worked into scrapers or chisels, whilst near them were the very polishers on which they had been pointed.
We have just spoken of polishers, and we said some time ago that it was by prolonged rubbing that the remarkable weapons of Neolithic times were produced. We must add now that a whole series of the polishers used are to be seen on the right bank of the Loing, near Nemours; one of which is a regular table (Fig. 72), on which can be made out no less than fifty grooves and twenty-five cup-like depressions.
FIGURE 72
Prehistoric polisher, near the ford of Beaumoulin, Nemours.
One would have expected to find the ground near these polishers covered with flakes of flint and pieces of tools of all kinds, but nothing of the kind has been discovered; a fact which leads its to suppose that the workmen only came down into the valley to finish off their weapons by polishing them.
At the period we are considering all the continents were peopled, and we must repeat, for it is the most important point of our present study, that the civilization attained to by the inhabitants was everywhere almost identical. Thus we find centres of manufacture similar to those of Europe at the foot of the mountains of Tunis and of Algeria. In one of the latter, at Hassi al Rhatmaia, the knives were piled up in one place, the scrapers in another, and the arrow-heads in a third. In this disposition M. Rabourdin thinks he sees a sign of the division of labor, one of the most important features of modern progress. M. Arcelin mentions a similar deposit on the summit of the Jebel Kalabshee, near Esneh in Egypt, and a few years ago another was found in Palestine, near the ancient Berytus, containing great numbers of hatchets, saws, scrapers, and all the implements characteristic of the Stone age; whilst amongst them lay the blocks from which they had been cut. Asia Minor was evidently an important manufacturing centre during the Stone age, and, as a matter of course, it must have had a considerable population; and even in America discoveries of similar extent have been made. At Kinosha, in Wisconsin, Lapham made out a manufactory of flint and quartzite arrow-heads, which dates from prehistoric times, and quite recently a yet more important centre of industry has been discovered at St. Andrew (Winnipeg).
The manufactories of Spiennes and Brandon deserve special notice, as they show us how our ancestors got the flint they used instead of metal. At Spiennes,[171] the excavations were begun in the open air, then the chalk containing the flint was reached by the sinking of vertical shafts, many of which were as much as forty feet in depth. These shafts were connected with each other by galleries running in every direction, but always following the belts of flints. Cuttings have brought to light the very implements of the ancient miners. They were of the simplest description, such as picks made of stag-horn and heavy stone hammers, all alike bearing marks of long service.[172]
Similar results were obtained in England. Canon Greenwell explored near Brandon, in Suffolk, a series of 254 shafts, known in the neighborhood as Grime’s Graves. As at Spiennes, the shafts were connected by galleries from three to five feet high, and one of theta was twenty-seven feet long. The shafts and galleries had been hollowed out with the help of picks exactly like those found in Belgium; seventy-nine were picked up that had been thrown away by the workmen.[173]
Some few years ago MM. Cartailhac and Boule discovered one of these primitive quarries at Mur de Barrez, the chief town of the department of Aveyron.[174]
They made out eight shafts in the face of a layer of limestone some eighty-one feet long, and at every turn of their excavations they came to fresh shafts. These shafts opened out towards the top like funnels, and the), were not more than three feet three inches below the surface, the flint having been struck at that depth (Fig. 73). These shafts were, in many cases, continued by galleries, as seen in our illustration (Fig. 74), or by trenches, where the light is, however, more or less shut out by small landslips. It is still easy, in spite of this, to make out the floor of the mine, for it is trodden hard by the feet of the ancient miners. Traces of charcoal, too, reveal the path they took, and we learn at the same time that they used fire to help them in their work.
FIGURE 73
Section of a flint mine; T vegetable earth, C pure limestone, C M Marly limestone, S flint.
M. Boule,[175] from whom we borrow these details, cannot restrain his astonishment at the practical knowledge shown by these prehistoric miners. He tells us that they sometimes left the flint standing as pillars at pretty short intervals, or they propped up the galleries with even more resistant material, cementing them with clay or with calcareous earth taken from the detritus. In spite of these precautions, landslips frequently occurred, and implements of stag-horn (Fig. 75) have often been flattened by the fall of the roof of the gallery. It is really curious to find implements of an exactly similar kind used for exactly similar purposes at Spiennes, Brandon, Mur de Barrez, and at Cissbury, to which, however, we shall have to refer again. In the shafts of Aveyron, as in those of England, the marks of blows of the picks are still to be seen, and in many cases a flint or horn-pick point is still imbedded in the rock or limestone, as if the miner had but just left his work.
FIGURE 74
Plan of a gallery, half destroyed in making the excavation which revealed its existence. U gallery still visible; G’ gallery destroyed by the excavation.
In this last example of what has been done in France, we must also add that of the shafts of Nointel (Oise) and those discovered in Maine by M. de Baye, in both of which were found nodules of flint in different stages of preparation, together with some stag-horn picks. In none of these excavations was any metal implement found, or any trace of the use of metal, so that we must conclude that the mines date from Neolithic times.
We have seen how man gradually brought to perfection the tools and weapons which were at first so clumsy. The growth of industry led to the birth of commerce, or, to speak more accurately, to that of barter. From the time of the earliest migrations intercourse was begun, or rather was carried on, between the tribes, as they gradually dispersed, often travelling considerable distances from each other, and fresh proofs of these relations are continually brought to light as we become better acquainted with prehistoric times. The flints worked by the cave-men of Belgium, the fossil shells so numerous at Chaleux, in the Frontal and Nuton caves, at Thayngen on the frontier between Switzerland and Germany, in Italy, in the stations of anterior date to the TERREMARE beds, have been found the shells of the pearl oyster of the Indian Ocean, whilst in the caves of the south of France, such as the Madeleine, that of Cro-Magnon, Bize in Herault, and Solutre on the banks of the Saone have been picked up the shells of Arctic marine mollusca. The cave-man of Gourdan was decked with shells from the Mediterranean, and the man of Mentone in his turn wore a head-dress made of Atlantic shells. Fossil shells were also much sought after; we have alluded to those from Champagne found in Belgium; others from the shell-marl of Touraine and Anjou had been taken into the caves of Perigord, whilst sea-urchins from the cretaceous strata of the south of France were found in a prehistoric station of Auvergne, and M. Massenat picked up at Laugerie-Basse two specimens of a species not met with anywhere but in the Eocene deposits of the isle of Wight. The Neolithic station of Champigny, near Paris, has yielded some objects from the Alps, and from Belgium, from the Vosges Mountains, and the Puy de Dome.
FIGURE 75
Picks, hammers, and mattocks made of stag-horn.
In the caves of Perigord were also found fragments of hyaline quartz, which must have been brought from the Alps or the Pyrenees. In Brittany and in Marne flints foreign to these granite districts are numerous; and Dr. Prunieres tells us that similar discoveries were made under the megalithic monuments of France, and that neither in the eroded limestone districts of Lozere, known locally as LES CAUSSES, nor under the dolmens of Haute-Vienne, were found any but implements made of rock not native to the country.
Hatchets, daggers, and nuclei, or as they are characteristically called by the country people LIVRES DE BEURRE, from Grand-Pressigny, have been picked up in the bed of the Seine, at Limagne in Auvergne, in Brittany, at Saint Medard near Bordeaux, on the banks of the Meuse, and even as far north as the Shetland Islands. At Concise was found red coral from the Mediterranean, whilst the yellow amber of the Baltic was picked up in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland, beneath the dolmens of Brittany, in sepulchral caves, such as those of Oyes (Marne) or Lombrives (Ariege), beneath the megalithic tomb of La Roquette, at Saint Pargoue (Herault) beneath the dolmen of Grailhe (Gard), at Malpas, and at Baume (Ardeche).[176] These are nearly all Neolithic tombs, though some few of them may date from the beginning of the Bronze age; but the cave-men of France owned amber even earlier than this, for five fragments have been found in the Aurensan Cave near Bagneres-de-Bigorre, which was inhabited in Palaeolithic times. Jadeite and nephrite[177] are met with in the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland and Bavaria, as in the caves of Liguria and Sardinia; chloromelanite[178] in France, and obsidian[179] in Lorraine, in the island of Pianosa and in the Cyclades. We have already spoken of the calaite[180] found beneath the dolmens of Brittany, and we may add now that it has also been found in the caves of Portugal and beneath the megalithic monuments of the south of France.
Commerce developed rapidly during Neolithic times, and, as far as we can make out from traces left, its course was from the southeast to the northwest. Streams and rivers were followed by merchants as by emigrants, and at an extremely remote date the sea no longer arrested the journeys of men. At a recent meeting of the British Anthropological Institute, Miss Buckland dwelt on the resemblance in the material, shape, and ornamentation of a golden cup found in , Cornwall, to other cups found at Mykenae and at Tarquinii, and maintained that the Cornish cup must have been the work of the same artisans, and have been brought by commerce from what was then the extremity of the known world.
It is not only in Europe that we can trace the relations established between men separated by vast distances, by oceans, and by apparently impassable deserts. The shells of the Atlantic and those of the Pacific, the copper of Lake Superior, the mica of the Alleghanies, and the obsidian of Mexico lie together beneath the tumuli of Ohio, and quite recently Mr. Putnam exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries a collection of jade celts and ornaments, some from Nicaragua, others from Costa Rica, and a hatchet with both edges sharpened from Michigan. No deposit of jade has so far been discovered on the American continent, so that we can only suppose these objects to have been brought from Asia at an unknown date. The marks they retain of having been rubbed up, and the holes made in them to hang them. up, show what store was set by them.
Monuments of many kinds scattered over different countries, weapons and implements, relics as they are of a remote past, enable us to gain a closer insight into the manners, customs, and mode of life of our ancestors of the Stone age. We can picture their daily life, which we know to have been one long struggle, without break or truce, for they had to contend, not only with wild animals but with each other, to fight for the use of their caves of refuge, for their hunting fields, and for their watercourses; and later, the first shepherds had to do battle for the pasturage necessary for their flocks. It is only too certain that, from the earliest dawn of humanity, men gave way, without any effort at self-control, to their brutal passions. The right of the strongest was the only law, and wherever man penetrated his course was marked by violence and by death. One of the femora of an old man was found in the celebrated Cro-Magnon Cave, bearing a deep depression caused by a blow of a projectile, and on the forehead of the woman that lay beside him is a large wound made by a small flint hatchet (Fig. 76). This gash on the frontal bone penetrated the skull, and was probably the cause of death, but not of sudden death, for round about the wound are marks of an attempt at healing it.[181] According to Dr. Hamy, many of the bones found in the Sordes Cave have very curious wounds. A gaping hole on the right parietal of a woman must have been a terrible wound (Fig. 77). The woman of Sordes, like that of Cro-Magnon, must have survived for some time; the marks of the removal of splinters of bone, which can quite easily be made out, leave no doubt on that point.[182]
FIGURE 76
Cranium of a woman, from Cro-Magnon, seen full face.
In the Baumes-Chaudes caves, situated in that part of the valley of the Tarn which belongs to the department of Lozere, Dr. Prunieres picked up numerous bones bearing scars, characteristic of wounds produced by stone weapons.[183] Some fifteen of these bones, such as the right and left hip bones, tibiae, and vertebrae, still contain flint points flung with sufficient force to penetrate deeply the bony tissue. Always indefatigable in his researches, Dr. Prunieres also mentions having found in the cave known as that of L’HOMME MORT bones bearing traces of cicatrized wounds, and he presented to the Scientific Congress at Clermont a human vertebra found beneath the Aumede dolmen pierced with an arrow-head, which is, so to speak, encased in the wound by the formation of bony tissue.
FIGURE 77
Skull of a woman found at Sordes, showing a severe wound from which she recovered.
Of the nineteen crania found in the Neolithic sepulchre of Vaureal two show traces of old wounds. One of them, that of a woman, has three different scars, two of which were of wounds that had healed, whilst the third in the occiput was a gaping hole, which had evidently caused death.
A sepulchral cave at Nogent-les-Vierges (Oise) contains the skeleton of a man with a wound on the forehead, no less than four and a half inches long by three broad. This man, who was dune young, the sutures being still very apparent, survived this serious wound for some time.
The Gourdan Cave has yielded crania and jaws broken by blunt weapons, whilst on other crania have been made out scratches and stripes which could only have been produced after the hair and skin had been removed. In the caves of the Petit-Morin valley, M. de Baye picked up some human vertebra pierced with flints, the points of which were still imbedded in the bones. In the Villevenard Cave one skull was found containing three arrow-beads with transverse points imbedded in the skull, the bone of which had closed upon them. Another arrow was lodged between the dorsal vertebrae. It is probable that these arrows had remained in the wounds; certainly that is the simplest way to account for their position. About two miles from the caves of which we have been speaking, M. de Baye discovered a sepulchre containing thirty skeletons, all of adult and strongly built individuals. The bodies were laid one above the other, and separated by large flat stones and a thin layer of earth. This sepulchral cave contained seventy-three flint points. As in the case of Villevenard, their position leads us to suppose that these points had been sticking in the flesh of the bodies when they were interred, and had fallen out when decomposition set in. Probably the bodies were those of men who had fallen victims in a bloody conflict that had taken place in the valley. In a cave at the station of Oyes, was found stretched upon a bed of stones a skeleton with a piece of flint, which had been flung with great force, imbedded in the upper part of the humerus. Round about the wound are the marks of many attempts at healing it.
Many of the human bones found in the Vivarais Cave bear traces of having been violently fractured by stone weapons with tapering points. In the Challes Cave (Savoy) lies the skeleton of a woman whose skull was fractured by a flint weapon, but in this case death was evidently immediate, at least if we may judge from the fact that there are no signs of the wound having received any treatment. In the Castellet Cave, a human vertebra contained the weapon which had pierced it, but when the bone was touched the arrow-head broke off. It had, however, been flung with such a sure hand that it had been driven ten inches deep into the bony tissue. Here, too, the absence of any exostosis proves that death quickly followed the wound.
FIGURE 78
Fragment of human tibia with exostosis enclosing the end of a flint arrow.
In other cases the victims seem to have lived for some time. We have already spoken of wounds in crania that had healed, and we may add that a few years ago a, human bone was presented to the Archaeological Society of Bordeaux which still retained a flint arrow-head in the wound it had made. Traces could clearly be made out of the inflammation caused by the presence of the foreign body, and the bony tissue secreted by the periosteum had, so to speak, taken the mould of the arrow (Fig. 78).
In the cave known as the Trou d’Argent (Basses-Alpes) amongst the bones of ruminants and carnivora, fragments of pottery and rubbish of all kinds, was found a piece of humerus (Fig. 79) pierced at the elbow joint and very neatly cut at the lower end, no doubt with the help of some of the implements of hard rock scattered about the cave. The position of this human bone amongst the remains of animals and fragments of a meal, points to its being a relic of a scene of cannibalism; adding yet another proof to what I said at the beginning of this work.
FIGURE 79
Fragment of human humerus pierced at the elbow joint, found in the Trou d’Argent.
Similar facts are reported front England and Germany. Dr. Wankel mentions an interesting prehistoric deposit at Prerau, near Olmutz, amongst the bones of animals belonging to the most ancient Quaternary fauna, such as the mammoth, the cave-bear, the cave-lion, the glutton, and the arctic fox; and amongst clumsy bone and ivory weapons and ornaments he found a human jaw and a femur covered with strip produced by flint hatchets. In 1801 Mr. Cunnington took several skeletons from a barrow near Heytesbury, the skull of one of which had been broken with a blunt implement; and Sir R. Hoare speaks of a skull from the neighborhood of Stonehenge split open by a blow from one of these formidable weapons. Several crania taken from a long barrow at West Kennet have similar wounds.
Similar facts were noticed at Littleton-Drew, at Uley, at Cotswold, and at Rodmarten, and from this Dr. Thurmam concluded that nearly all those who were buried in long barrows had met with a violent death.[184] He speaks, however, of one skull pierced with a large hole, the edges of which had become rounded smooth, showing the action of a recuperative process, and proving that the injured man had long survived his serious wound. In 1809, a farmer of Kirkcudbrightshire set to work to demolish a large cairn that interfered with his tilling of the soil, and which, according to popular tradition, was the tomb of a Scotch king. In taking away the earth the workmen found a large stone coffin, in which lay the skeleton of a man of great stature. The arm had been almost separated from the trunk by the blow of a diorite hatchet, a broken bit of which remained imbedded in the bone.[185]
One of the few crania that can with certainty be said to have belonged to Lake Dwellers of Switzerland was found at Sutz, near Zurich; this skull was fractured at the back. The roundness of the wound, which had been serious enough to cause death, has led authorities to conclude that it was made with one of the formidable pick-hammers, so many of which were found in the lake of Bienne.[186] Nilsson speaks of a human cranium pierced with a flint arrow, and of another, both found at Tygelso (Scandinavia), containing a dart made out of the antler of an eland.[187] At Chauvaux, at Cesareda, and Gibraltar other crania have been found bearing the marks of mortal wounds, and if we cross the Atlantic we meet with similar instances. Lund tells us that at Lagoa do Sumidouro crania were found pierced with circular tools, whilst near them lay the implements that had caused death.[188] At Comox, in Vancouver Island, a skeleton was found with a flint knife imbedded in one of the bones, and at Madisonville (Ohio) another, one of the bones of which was pierced by a triangular stone arrow; whilst beneath a mound in Indiana was picked up a skull pierced by a flint arrow more than six inches long. Excavations at Copiapo (Chili) brought to light the skeleton of a man who had sustained no less than eight wounds from arrows. The force with which they must have been shot is really astonishing; one had broken the upper jaw and knocked out several teeth, penetrating to the brain; and others were still sticking in the vertebrae and ribs.[189]
In the New as in the Old World man survived many of these horrible wounds, and a skull found under a mound near Devil’s River shows a serious wound inflicted many years before death, and one of the Peruvian crania in the Peabody Museum bears a long frontal fracture, doubtless produced by the violent blow of a club; the five or six fragments still to be made out are, so to speak, solidified, and the wounded man had evidently lived on for many years, thanks apparently to his good constitution alone, for there are no signs of the performing of any surgical operation, such as the removal of the splinters of bone, for instance.[190]
In 1884 a human vertebra, with an arrow-head imbedded in it, was picked up on the island of Santa Cruz. The apophysis was broken, and the extent of the fracture shows the great force of the blow. The victim evidently died of the wound, for there is no sign of its having been healed.
I have dwelt upon these deaths and wounds in spite of the inevitable monotony of such a list, not because I wish to bring into prominence the fact that from the earliest times the struggle for existence was fierce and bloody, but because I am anxious to prove that in these remote days an organized and intelligent society had grown up. No one could have survived such wounds as we have described, but for the care and nursing of those around him, such as the other members of his family or of his tribe. The wounded one must have been fed by others for months; nay more, he must have been carried in migrations, and his food and resting-place must have been prepared for him. Moreover, and this is of even yet more importance to our argument, they must have been men able to treat wounds and to set bones.
This last fact has been proved beyond a doubt by the discovery of numerous bones with the old wounds completely cicatrized. “In several examples,” says Dr. Prunieres, speaking in this connection, “we can make out the fractures set with a neatness which gives us a very high opinion of the skill of the Neolithic bone setters. The setting of one fracture at the lower end of the tibia and of another at the neck of the femur, are not inferior to what we should expect from the most skilful surgeons of the globe.”[191] A remarkable fact truly, but one often met with in the most widely separated regions of the earth, the importance of which cannot be overrated, and justifies the giving of a few more details.
In 1873 Dr. Prunieres, to whom science has reason to be very grateful for his singular discovery, presented to the members of the French Association, in session at Lyons, a human parietal with a rounded piece of bone let into it. This piece of bone was rather larger than a five-franc piece, and the skull into which it had been fixed was found beneath the Lozere dolmen. A large opening, some three inches in diameter, the edges of which were worn smooth, had been made in this skull, and the piece of bone let into it was thicker than the skull itself, as well as different in color, the cranium being dark and the foreign piece of bone pale yellow. It was evident therefore that the two pieces did not belong in life to one person, and that the rounded piece had been cut out of some other skull. The following year Dr. Prunieres added fresh details about other rounded pieces of skull that be had discovered let into crania, some of which pieces had evidently been introduced during the life of the patient, who had died under the operation of trepanation, whilst others had been put in after death. Dr. Prunieres in every case speaks of RONDELLES or rounded pieces of skulls, and we prefer to quote him exactly, but as a matter of fact the trepanation was sometimes done with elliptical, triangular, or even pyramidal pieces of bone.
Later no less than sixty fresh examples, corroborating Dr. Prunieres’ discoveries, were found in the Baumes-Chaudes caves, and Broca in his turn reported the finding of three crania in the cave of L’HOMME MORT, from which great pieces had been taken which had evidently not been lost by accident.
From this time excavations and discoveries made under Dr. Prunieres succeeded each other rapidly. In 1887 his collection contained 167 crania or fragments of crania, all perforated, 115 of which were picked up in the caves of Lozere, which are probably of more recent date, beneath the dolmens of the DEVEZES, as those vast plains given lip to pasturage are called. These dolmens, which were doubtless reserved for the burial of chiefs, often contain many valuable objects. Beneath one, for instance, were found fifteen beautiful darts of variegated flint, four polished boars’ tusks, some schist pendants, some shells cut into the shape of teeth, some bone and stone necklace beads, and, lastly, two small bronze beads. These last-named objects justify us in dating the dolmen from the Bronze epoch, when the use of bronze began to spread over the district, though it was still not generally employed.
Attention once awakened, similar facts began to be announced from many different quarters. In the Neolithic caves of Marne were found skulls with rounded holes in them, pieces of skull such as are shown in Fig. 28, which were probably worn as amulets. M. de Baye has in his fine collection more than twenty examples of trepanation, one of. which is shown in Fig. 80. In nearly every case the operation had been performed after death; three examples alone show it to have been done during life, and that the patient certainly survived, for the wound shows very evident signs of having healed, and the edges of the openings no longer bear the marks of the tool of the operator. On one of the three crania there were two wounds near each other, but they were quite separate, and were evidently not treated at the same time.
FIGURE 80
Mesaticephalic skull, with wound which has been trepanned.
A tumulus in the Guisseny commune (Finistere), excavated about two years ago, covered over a sepulchral crypt. At the southeastern extremity was picked up a badly baked hand-made earthenware vase with four handles. Beside the vase lay a skull, on which could be made out traces of oxidation, which had probably been caused by the wearing of a metal band, which has not been found. This skull bears on the right side a little oval hole with cicatrized edges about an inch long by two fifths of an inch broad. The discovery of a bronze dagger and two bronze plaques leaves no doubt as to the age of this tumulus. This example of trepanation is the only well authenticated one of which I know in Brittany. It is true one skull has been mentioned as found beneath the megalithic monument of Saint-Picoux de Quiberon (Morbihan), which is even said to bear marks of sawing and scraping made in attempting trepanation, but this fact has been very much questioned, and the date at which the trepanation was performed, if performed it were, is very doubtful.[192] The proof we are seeking of the antiquity of the operation of trepanation is not therefore to be found here.
On a plain amongst the hills of the right bank of the Seine, above Paris, rises a mound resembling a promontory which is known as the Guerin mound, and consists of a vast deposit of chalk which was excavated long ago. Successive operations have brought to light eight caves, most of which contained a number of human remains, which were unfortunately dispersed without having been scientifically examined. One alone, opened in 1874, contained numerous bones belonging to individuals of every age and of both sexes, with polished flints, fragments of pottery, and implements of stag-horn. Amongst these relics was found the skull of an old man showing a very curious example of trepanation. It was unfortunately broken by the workmen in the very moment of discovery, and could only be very insufficiently examined. Other examples, however, which could be properly authenticated, are not wanting from the banks of the Seine and Marne; two fragments of skull were found in the canton of Moret, one of which had been trepanned during the life of its owner, and the other after death. We must also mention the crania presented to the learned societies at the Sorbonne, one of which came from the plateau of Avrigny, near Mousseaux-les-Bray (Seine-et-Marne). Side by side with the skeleton lay polished hatchets, scrapers, and arrow-heads, fragments of pottery blackened by smoke, and lastly a solitary bone of an ox, pierced with three holes at regular distances, which had probably been used as a flute. Of nine crania found in this excavation three were pierced, two after death and one during life, the edges of the last named bearing very evident traces of treatment.
A trepanned skull was also discovered in a Neolithic sepulchre near Crecy-sur-Morin, where lay no less than thirty skeletons, remarkable for the strongly defined section of the tibiae, whilst around were strewn hatchets, flint knives, bones, stilettos and picks of siliceous limestone with handles made of pieces of stag-horn. The tomb, built of stones without mortar, contained two contiguous chambers separated by a wall, and covered over by a stone weighing more than 1,200 tons. It seems likely that this huge stone had not been moved — it must have been beyond the strength of the makers of the tomb to lift it, — but that the spaces beneath, in which the dead had been placed, had been merely hollowed out. In the covered AVENUE DES MUREAUX, of which I have already spoken, were picked up several trepanned crania. The tools, scrapers, and piercers, which had probably been used for the operation, lay near the crania.
A Neolithic sepulchre containing three trepanned crania was opened at Dampont, near Dieppe. The operation had been as neatly executed as if it had been performed by one of our most distinguished surgeons. As at Crecy, the sepulchral crypt was divided into two chambers, and the slab between them was pierced with a square opening,[193] — a fresh example of the curious practice of making openings, of which we have spoken in treating of so many different regions, often apparently completely cut off from communication with each other.
Beneath the Bougon dolmen (Deux-Sevres), in the west of France, was found a skull, and at Lizieres in the same department, the skeleton of a tall old man with a dolichocephalic skull and platycnemic tibiae bearing traces of old wounds badly healed. The bony tissue of the skull was in an unhealthy state and the trepanation had evidently been part of medical treatment. At Saint-Martin-la-Riviere (Vienna), a tomb dating from Neolithic times contained five trepanned crania, on one of which the perforation had been made by scraping. In this tomb was also found a round piece of skull with a hole in it, which had doubtless been used as a pendant. The other objects found in this sepulchre were of a remarkable character, and included hatchets made of coralline limestone, jade, fibrolite, and serpentine, the blades of flint knives, arrows, some feathered, others stalked, some necklace beads, and a number of vases, some apodal, others with flat stands, and nearly all without any attempt at ornamentation. Beneath a dolmen near St. Affrique, M. Cartailhac discovered a skull with two holes in it; one near the bregma, which had been made during life, and the other on a level with the lambda, which had not been made until after death.[194] We cannot now note the important conclusions founded on these two perforations, we must be content with adding here that the tomb contained four other skeletons with crania showing no trace of trepanation; the tibiae were platycnemic and the humeri had the so-called perforation of the olecranon farces, which certain anthropologists, as I think without sufficient reason, consider characteristic of inferior races. We must mention yet one more discovery which it will not do to omit. A human parietal with a piece missing that had evidently been taken out, was found beneath the rock-shelter of Entre-Roches near Angouleme. The skull bore very evident traces of the performance of an operation which may or may not have been executed during life. Was it done to remove the diseased bone — for it was diseased — in the hope of prolonging life? Did the patient die under the hands of the surgeon, or was the piece of bone taken out after death to be used as an ornament or an amulet? Any one of these hypotheses is possible, and all we can say for certain is that there is no sign of the wound having been healed in any way. This is a common thing enough, and the interest of the discovery arises from a different cause. The rock-shelter of Entre-Roches is supposed to date from Paleolithic times, and if it were certain that there has been no displacement of the soil on which the parietal was found, it is to be concluded that trepanation was practised in the Quaternary period when man was living amongst the large extinct pachydermata and felidae. But it will be difficult to admit this unless other discoveries confirming it are made. If, however, we cannot prove that trepanation was practised in France in Palaeolithic times, we can assert that it was continued down to the earliest centuries of the Christian era. One remarkable case of trepanation was found, for instance, in the Merovingian cemetery near St. Quentin; and a trepanned skull was recently exhibited at a meeting of the Anthropological Society in Paris, which had been found beneath a Merovingian tomb at Jeuilly. The patient had long survived his wound. The skeleton was found in a stone trough, narrower at the foot than at the head. The skeleton of a man between forty and fifty years of age was found in a Frank cemetery at Limet, near Liege. On the left parietal of the skull was an oval hole as big as a pigeon’s egg, bearing traces of having been medically treated. The patient, like the man of Jeuilly, certainly survived the operation. His tomb, as were the resting-places of his neighbors in death, was covered over with a huge unhewn stone, and beside him lay another skeleton. A few nails and bits of wood were the only things found in the tomb. We may also mention the skeleton of a Frank of between fifty-five and sixty-five years of age with a trepanned skull, found by M. Pilloy, in a cemetery of the St. Quentin ARRONDISSEMENT, which also contained numerous objects dating from the sixth century A.D.
So far we have only spoken of France, but similar facts are reported all over Europe, and the difficulty really is to make a selection. Some round pieces of skull, like those of Lozere, have been picked up in Umbria[195]; and a skull, bearing traces of an operation, the aim of which was to remove a portion of the left parietal, was found in the Casa da Mouva (Portugal), which dates, as do so many in France, from Neolithic times.
Goss mentions a discovery in one of the pile-dwellings of Lake Bienne, of a skull with a large hole in it with bevelled edges. There is no trace of this wound having healed, and the patient had evidently died soon after the operation.
The Prague Museum possesses two crania found at Bilin in Bohemia; one, of a pronounced dolichocephalic type, has near the middle of the right parietal an opening measuring one and a half by two and a third inches; the cicatrization is complete, and trepanation was evidently performed long before death. The other is mesaticephalic, and bears a round opening about one and a half inches in diameter. Dr. Wankel, to whom we owe these details, is well known through other discoveries; his excavations in the Bytchiskala Cave brought to light the skeleton of a young girl of ten or twelve years old, who bad undergone the operation of trepanation. The wound, which was on the right side of the forehead, was half healed. The child still wore the ornaments she had been fond of in life — bronze bracelets and a necklace of large glass beads.
Discoveries of a similar character succeeded each other in Bohemia, and in nearly every case the operation of trepanation had been performed on the upper part of the forehead. Not very long ago it was reported to the Anthropological Society of Berlin that in excavating two tombs containing the remains of burnt bodies at Trupschutz, on the west of Brux, some fragments of skull were picked up, showing traces of trepanation. The edges of the wound in this case bad been healed, and the patient had lived on after the operation. Professor Virchow came to the same conclusion with regard to a skull from a Neolithic tomb which bore on the right parietal traces of an ancient cicatrized wound. He also tells us of the finding in Poland of a round piece of skull which had evidently been worn as an amulet.[196]
In the north of Europe similar discoveries have been made. At Borreby, in Denmark, a skull was found from which large pieces had been taken; and another from beneath a dolmen at Noes, in the island of Falster, had a hole in it no less than two and a quarter by one and three quarter inches in size. In the one case the holes were parts of a wound to which the victim had succumbed; in the other the edges were too regular to have been caused by traumatism. A Russian skull, a cast of which has recently been presented to the Italian Anthropological Society, bears traces of two trepanations; one performed during life, the other after death. The former had evidently been caused neither by illness nor by a wound.
General Faidherbe discovered at Roknia, in Algeria, two trepanned skulls, dating from a remote antiquity, in one of which the wound is half an inch in diameter, and shows no sign of cicatrization; and travellers speak of evident traces of similar operations on skulls dating from the time of the Ainos;, the ancestors or predecessors of the Japanese at the present day; and if we cross the Atlantic, we shall meet with instances of trepanations executed in a similar manner, and probably for similar reasons.
We meet with numerous examples of trepanation in America, and fresh discoveries are daily made by the energetic men of science in that country. Dr. Mantegazza[197] mentions three examples of trepanation from Peru, which are of very great interest. One skull, still bound up in many cloths, was found in the Sanja-Huara Cave (province of Anta), which had been twice trepanned, and on which yet two more attempts at trepanation bad been made. The latter seem to have taken place at different times, and death seems to have succeeded the last operation. Another skull which had belonged to an adult of Huarocondo has two frontal openings close to each other; the upper, of elliptical shape, is of large size and was evidently made after death. Yet another skull from the province of Ollantay-tambo bears a double trepanation, evidently made during life. The healing of the parietal opening proves that it was made before the wound in the forehead, in which the edges have remained rough. Dr. Mantegazza thinks that in the two first cases the operations took place after the patient had been wounded, but that in the third, the patient operated upon bad been epileptic or perhaps even insane. We find it difficult to follow the learned professor here, as w e are ignorant of the grounds for his conclusions.
We give an illustration (Fig. 81) of a trepanned skull found in a cemetery in the Yucay valley. A square piece has been cut out by making four regular incisions. The bone shows traces of an ancient inflammation, and many eminent surgeons, including Nelaton and Broca, have not hesitated to attribute the opening, large as it is (seven by six inches), to a surgical operation. If the incisions are carefully examined it is easy to see that they were made with the help of a pointed instrument, such as a clumsily made drill, for instance. Each incision must have taken a long time to make, and we note with ever increasing astonishment that the ancient Peruvians were not acquainted with the use of iron or steel, and that the hardest metal they employed was bronze.
FIGURE 81
Trepanned Peruvian skull.
A few years ago a sepulchre was opened at Chaclacayo, at the foot of Mount Chosica, not far from Lima. In this tomb lay three mummies, of a man, a woman, and a child. Near them lay a human skull, having about the middle of the forehead an opening, measuring some two and a half by two inches. It is of polygonal form, and eight different incisions can easily be made out, which appear to have been made with some notched stone implement. On raising a strip of skin, still adhering to the skull, there was seen on the front part of the sagittal suture a very small perforation, the result either of a wound or of an operation which bad taken place during life. It has been suggested that the piece of bone taken from the skull had been used to make a lance or arrow-head, which was superstitiously supposed by the owner to ensure his victory. This is, however, a mere suggestion, of which no proof can be given.
In other party of America discoveries have been made of trepanned skulls, supposed to date from even more remote times than those we have just been considering. A few years ago Professor Putnam found, in the State of Ohio, some old wells idled with cinders and rubbish of all kinds. From one of them, which was deeper than the others, he took several crania, some of which bore evident traces of trepanation. From a mound near Dallas (Illinois) were taken more than one hundred skeletons, all of adults, placed side by side in a crouching attitude. Every one of them had a round opening on the left temple, and in some of these wounds the flint implement which had produced them was still imbedded. It is very evident that we have here tokens of some funereal rite, the meaning of which is uncertain, though it was evidently practised also in districts very remote from Illinois. To mention yet other examples, the excavation of a tumulus of irregular form near Devil’s River (Michigan) has brought to light five skeletons buried u right, whilst a sixth lay in the centre of the tumulus, which was evidently, if w e may so express it, the place of honor. On each of the six crania a perforation had been made after death.
A number of crania and parts of crania on which trepanation had been performed have also been taken from several mounds on Chamber’s Island, from beneath the mound in the neighborhood of the Sable River, near Lake Huron, and near the Red River[198] Gillman thinks that the Michigan trepanations, which bad been made with clumsy tools, were simply holes for hanging up skulls as trophies, as is still customary amongst the Dyaks of Borneo; but this seems scarcely a tenable hypothesis, for as a rule the skeletons lying in their last home are complete. Quite recently were discovered, beneath a tumulus near Rock River, eight skeletons, the skull of one of which bore a circular perforation made during life, which rather upsets Gillman’s theory.
But to resume our narrative. The trepanations reported from North America are generally posthumous, and we can prove nothing as to their origin. Were they marks of honor made in some religious rite? Were they openings to allow the spirit of the departed to revisit the body it had abandoned? or, to suggest a far more worldly and revolting motive, were they merely holes through which to pick out the brains of the dead. A missionary, in a letter dated from Fort Pitt (Canada) in 1880, describes the mode of scalping practised by the Redskins, and says that they often take a round piece of skull as well as the scalp. May not this be a case of atavism, or the transmission of a custom from one generation to another, for the origin of which we must go back to the most remote ages? In the present state of our knowledge, insufficient as it is, this explanation is the most. plausible.
It is even more difficult to come to a satisfactory conclusion with regard to European examples of the practice we have been describing. Trepanation was certainly practised in the treatment of certain diseases of the bone, such as osteitis or caries. Professor Parrot mentions a case worth quoting.[199] A few years ago several skeletons were found at Bray-sur-Seine (Seine-et-Marne) with numerous objects, such as polished stone hatchets, bone stilettos, shell necklaces and ornaments, all undoubtedly Neolithic. One of the crania had been trepanned, the position of the operation showing that its object had been to treat an osteitis. The operation had succeeded, and the cicatrization of the bones, both about the wound and in the parts originally affected, shows that recovery was complete. This is the only example we have of an operation executed with a view to curing a disease that can actually be seen, and it enables us to conclude that these men, of whom we know so little, had some notion of surgery. Were trepanations also practised to cure epilepsy or to heal mental affections? From the earliest times the seat of these troubles was always supposed to be the brain, and an ancient book of medicine recommends as a remedy the scraping of the outside of the skull.[200] In a recent book (“De la Trepanation dans l’Epilepsie par le Traumatisme du Crane”), Echeverria mentions several cases of cure by trepanation when epilepsy had been the result of an injury. Observation may have led our prehistoric ancestors to discover this. May we date this custom then from prehistoric times? It is very difficult to decide with certainty either for or against it.
Of one thing, however, we may be quite certain. The cranial perforations so much like one another reported from districts so remote and different in character, cannot be accidental. It is impossible to attribute to chance the occurrence of injuries of exactly the same size in crania of totally different origins. Setting aside the Entre-Roches skull, the antiquity of which does not seem to us sufficiently established, we find this custom maintained throughout the period characterized by the use of polished stone weapons and implements, the erection of megalithic monuments, and the domestication of animals. It was practised by the men of the cave of L’HOMME MORT at the beginning of the Neolithic period, and was still in use at Moret when metals began to be known. The discoveries of Dr. Wankel, the excavations of the tumulus of Guisseny, prove that trepanation was continued throughout the Bronze age, whilst the Jeuilly and Limet tombs show that it was not discontinued even in Merovingian times.
The long continuance of such a practice is a very interesting fact, and we may mention a yet more curious one. How are we to explain trepanations that had no apparent motive on crania showing no symptoms of disease? How account for the repetition at different tunes of this operation, first on the living subject and then on the corpse, as at St. Affrique, Bougon (Fig. 82), at Feigneux (Oise), where Dr. Topinard has recently made excavations in a Neolithic cave and reports that a dolichocephalic skull of the same type as the crania of the cave of L’HOMME MORT, belonging to a man of about thirty years of age, bore two perforations, one made during life, the other after death? The first measured two and a third by two and a half inches, and was surrounded by scratches, showing how clumsy the operator had been.[201]
FIGURE 82
Skull from the Bougon dolmen (Deux-Sevres), seen in profile.
In nearly every case the subjects operated on were young, and long survived the operation. The knowledge of this fact was from the first a very useful guide in the study of the subject of trepanation, and eagerly pursued researches constantly confirm it. One skull, for instance, from the cave of L’HOMME MORT (Fig. 83), had a large opening produced partly by an old operation and partly by two posthumous trepanations. The subject had been trepanned in childhood or early youth. There could be no doubt on that point; cicatrization had been complete, the bony tissue having returned to its original condition. Then after death, at an adult age, the relations or friends of the deceased had cut out further round portions of the skull as near as possible to the old wound, probably with a view to keeping these pieces as amulets.
FIGURE 83
Trepanned prehistoric skull.
This was to Broca a flash of illuminating light, and according to him was in some cases a religious rite, a ceremony of initiation, perhaps even a custom inculcated by an established religion. The child who had been subjected to it and had survived — as probably most of the victims did survive, — attained to a certain position and celebrity in his life, and after his death the fragments of his skull, especially those portions near the old wound, became treasured relics, and were in the end buried with their fortunate possessor on his death.
This superstition appears to have long survived even in historic times, and a Gallic chain is quoted[202] on which hung a round piece of skull with three holes in it. In. deed, these ornaments were so much sought after that counterfeits of them were made; at least, we cannot in any other way account for the occurrence of objects exactly resembling round pieces of human crania, but in reality made out of pieces of a stag’s antler found in the Baumes-Chaudes Cave.
Yet another point deserves mention. It was evidently considered undesirable that the crania from which pieces had been taken should be left in a mutilated condition, and therefore pieces front other crania were taken to fill up the gap, so that, says Broca,[203] a new life was evidently supposed to await the dead, for otherwise what object can the restitution have served?
Dr. Prunieres is also of opinion[204] that the introduction into the crania of certain deceased persons of round pieces from other skulls implies the belief in another life. This explanation, hypothetical as it is, is really very plausible, and it is a pleasant thought that our remote ancestors had faith in a future life; which faith is alike the greatest honor and the greatest comfort of humanity. Is not yet another more striking proof of the belief in a second existence to be found in the number of objects placed in tombs at all periods of time and in every part of the world? It is this belief, raising man as it does above the material needs of his daily life, which forms the true grandeur of the human race, and if a nation once loses it it is sure to relapse into barbarism.
When trepanning was the fashion there is no doubt that the operation was performed in many different ways. Posthumous trepanations were accomplished with the aid of a flint implement used as a chisel or a saw. There was greater difficulty about an operation on a living subject. Broca is of opinion that it was done with a drill turned round and round in the skull in the way the French shepherds still treat diseases of the crania in their sheep. The elliptical form of the wound seemed to him to prove this, and he was further of opinion that when an opening had been drilled in the skull at the point chosen, the trepanation was completed by scraping the bone with a small flint blade.[205] Discoveries made since the death of the great French anthropologist, however, compel us to modify this opinion. The inflammation of the bone noticed along the edges of the trepanation proves that a notched implement was used to saw out the piece of skull.[206]
However the operation may have been performed, it is not one of great danger to the patient or of great difficulty to the operator. Experiments on animals with Quaternary flint implements have always been successful, and have had no tragic results, which is the best proof we can possibly give.
The size of the perforations made varies ad infinitum. One, the largest known, is described which is no less than sixteen inches in diameter.[207] Examples are known of the trepanation of every part of the skull, even of the forehead, which at one time was supposed to have escaped. We have ourselves given instances of frontal trepanation, and Dr. Prunieres mentions eleven cases in which the forehead had been operated on.
To conclude, we must repeat that trepanation is not really a dangerous operation, and the reason it is nearly always followed by the death of the subject in our own time is because it is never attempted except in desperate cases, and the fatal result is really caused by the cerebral disease, on account of which the operation was performed. History tells us of its practice in very ancient times; Hippocrates speaks of it as often resorted to by Greek physicians. It is performed in the present day by the Negritos of Papua and the natives of Australia and of some of the South Sea Islands, where it is considered efficacious in many maladies. We also find it practised by the rough miners of Cornwall and the wild mountaineers of Montenegro.[208] An army doctor who travelled in Montenegro a few years ago said that it was no rare thing to meet men who had been subjected to trepanation seven, eight, or even nine times. It is an interesting question, though we must not enter into it here, whether many races could stand such a number of operations as this.
The only instance we know in the present day of trepanation practised as a religious rite, is met with among the Kabyles, who are established at the foot of Mount Aures on the south of the Atlas. The operation is performed among them by the THEBIBE, one of their priests, by the aid of a simple gimlet which he turns rapidly round between his fingers. Among the Kabyles are men who have submitted to an operation of this kind several times.
We have now passed in review the weapons of prehistoric peoples, the wounds they caused, and the modes of healing them known to our ancestors; we have still to study the modes of defence resorted to by them in face of the many dangers by which they were surrounded; but the importance of this subject is such as to deserve separate consideration.
CHAPTER VII
Camps, Fortifications, Vitrified Forts; Santorin; The Towns upon the Hill of Hissarlik.
Combativeness, to use the language of phrenology, is one of the most lively instincts of humanity. The Bible tells us of the struggle between the sons of Adam, and shows us might making right ever since the days of primeval man. History is but one long account of wars and conquests, victories or defeats, and progress is chiefly marked in inventions which made battles more sanguinary and added to the number of victims slaughtered. At the very dawn of humanity man learned to make weapons; very soon, however, weapons ceased to appear sufficient. The first fortification was doubtless the cave, which its owner strengthened by closing the entrance with blocks of stone and piles of broken rock, or by digging deep trenches about it.
Population rapidly increased and war was declared between tribe and tribe, nation and nation, race and race. Terrible must have been the struggles between invaders and the original possessors of the soil. Means of defence were multiplied to keep pace with new modes of attack, and our ancestors of the Stone age were intelligent enough to make places of refuge in which on necessity they could shelter their wives and children, and later, when they became sedentary, their flocks and their stores of grain. In many different localities we find the remains of camps and fortifications, which, to avoid using a more ambitious term, we may characterize generally as enclosures.[209]
These primitive enclosures, says Bertrand in his “Archeologie Celtiquc et Gauloise,” may have been very much more numerous than is supposed, if we include amongst them, as it appears we ought, many ruins long thought to date from the Roman era.
There is no doubt as to the purpose served by the camps, but we are not prepared to speak as positively as does Bertrand as to their origin, and the difficulty of deciding is very greatly increased on account of these camps having been successively occupied at different epochs by different peoples. Bearing in mind this reservation, we will now sum up to the best of our ability all that is so far known about the most important remains hitherto examined.
The residence of prehistoric man in the rich districts between the Sambre and the Meuse is proved by worked flints, fragments of pottery, and human bones dating from most remote times. The stations successively occupied were situated near watercourses or copious springs, and, where possible, on isolated escarped plateaux surrounded by ravines. Hastedon, about a mile and a quarter from Namur, is one of the best examples we can quote.[210] The camp, first made out in 1865, formed a long square, covering some thirteen hectares, or about thirty-two acres. It is situated on an isolated mound connected with the main plateau by an isthmus 227 feet long, and is protected on the south and west by a deep ravine: To these natural defences men had added important works to those parts that were accessible. The cutting of trenches a few years ago brought to light walls of a mean thickness of more than nine feet, formed of masses of rock and sand and round pieces of wood parallel with a REVETEMENT of dry stones surmounted by a palisade consisting of three pieces of wood parallel with the walls, and seven perpendicular traverses. All the wood was charred; the besieged had evidently been driven out by fire. Excavations led to the finding of Roman coins; this and the resemblance of the palisades to those described by Caesar,[211] the very name of Hastedon, and the tradition everywhere prevalent in the district, that this bad been the site of a Gallic Roman camp, led to the general adoption of that opinion. In fact, Napoleon III. actually ordered excavations to be made in the hope of finding traces of the Atuatuques, one of the roost warlike of the tribes of northern Gaul; but side by side with historic relics were no less than ten thousand flints. These are chiefly merely chips or nuclei which had served as hammers, or long thin slices, with some few arrow- and lance-beads often skilfully cut, some polished hatchets, and saws with fine teeth. Nearly all are notched and worn with use, which does away with the idea that the place where they were found was the site of a workshop such as I have already described. With these worked flints were found some fragments of coarse pottery, which could not possibly be confounded with Roman or Gallic work. The flints and pottery, and the walls put together without cement, point to the conclusion that if the camp of Hastedon was occupied by the Roman legions, it was long previous to their day inhabited by some Neolithic race, ignorant of the use of any but stone weapons and implements.
The camp of Pont-de-Bonn in the commune of Modave (Namur) very much resembles in its arrangement that of Hastedon.[212] A mound stands out upon the plain protected on the north and west by rocks difficult of access and connected with the main plateau by a very narrow tongue of land. Outside we can make out regular trenches parallel with each other, and connected by a wall of masonry, at the foot of which wall were picked up a good many iron nails. Inside the ENCEINTE itself worked flints were associated with Roman coins. Are not these proofs in the first place of a long Neolithic occupation, then of the residence of Gallic Romans, and yet later of even more modern people of whom the masonry walls and iron nails are relics?
Limburg also contains some defensive works, many centuries old, which are as yet but little known. We may mention amongst them the so-called dyke of Zeedyck, near Tongres, a formidable intrenchment some 2,186 yards long by more than 325 feet wide at the base, and of a height varying from 49 to 65 feet; the earthen ramparts of Willem on the Geule, the not less important ones of Houlem, with many others far away from the great highways of communication, but within the limits of the two provinces of Liege and Limburg.[213]
A few years ago Bertrand said that there are in France some four hundred earthen ENCEINTES, only sixty of which contain relics connecting them with the Gallic Romans. Since Bertrand’s announcement this number has been greatly increased, thanks to eagerly prosecuted local researches. De Pulligny mentions a hundred in Upper Normandy[214]; Martinet says they are very numerous in Berry; one of the most remarkable, the quadrilateral of Haute-Brenne, covered an area of nearly three thousand acres.[215] Amongst the forests on the Vosges Mountains were discovered long single and double walls, the course of which follows the crest of the ramparts overlooking the valley of the Zorn, between Lutzelbourg and Saverne.[216] At Rosmeur, on Penmarch Point (Finistere), Du Chatellier excavated two tumuli which appear to have been connected with a series of defensive works encircling the whole promontory.[217] It would be merely fastidious to multiply instances, we will content ourselves with describing a few of the most interesting of these antique fortifications.[218]
The camp of Chassey (Saone-et-Loire) may be compared with those of Belgium. It is situated on a plateau 2,440 feet long by a width varying from 360 to 672 feet. A huge natural rocky barrier rises on the south and east, whilst on the northeast and southwest we find two important intrenchments made of huge blocks of stone with a REVETEMENT of earth. One of these intrenchments is 45, the other only 29 feet high. There is no trace inside of springs, and the inhabitants must always have had to obtain their water-supply by artificial means. The cisterns now in this camp appear to have been dug out with iron implements, and are certainly of later date than the first occupation of the plateau. Numerous objects picked up in the Chassey Camp belong to Neolithic times, but the people who have occupied it since those remote days, the men of the Bronze and Iron ages, the Gauls, the Romans, and the Merovingians, have so turned over the ground that products of industries, completely strange to each other, are everywhere mixed together in inextricable confusion.[219]
There were originally a good many hearths about the camp, and it was near to one of them that the spoon was found, figured in an earlier chapter of this book (Fig. 25). With it were picked up polished fibrolite, basalt, chloromelanite, serpentine, and diorite hatchets; evidently made in the neighborhood, as is proved beyond a doubt by the numerous chips and partly worked pieces lying about, as well as the discovery of no less than thirty polishers, many of them showing signs of long service. Bone implements of all kinds and whistles made of the phalanges of oxen are also constantly found. Even if the presence of these objects does not enable us to come to any final conclusion, they are at least most useful and interesting in enabling us to put together little by little a picture of the life of the most ancient inhabitants of France.
The camp of Catenoy, Dear Liancourt (Oise) is arranged very much in the same manner as that of Chassey.[220] CAESAR’S CAMP, as it is called by the people of the neighborhood, forms a long triangle, the apex of which rests on the eastern extremity of the plateau. Excavations have yielded a number of Gallic-Roman objects, with some polished hatchets, some broken, others intact, with stone and bone weapons, resembling but for a few slight differences those we have described so often. Numerous fragments of pottery were also picked up, which pottery, hand-made and mixed with crushed shells, seldom has either handles or any attempt at ornamentation. Weapons, implements, and pottery are all alike totally different from any Roman or Gallic work known. It is impossible to study the relics at Catenoy without coming to the conclusion that the camp was occupied at periods prior to Gallic and Roman times, and that there, as in many other districts, the Latin conquerors had succeeded an unknown vanquished race.
De Quatrefages has accurately made out a series of works extending along the left bank of the Nive, as far as Itsassou, and of which the Pas-de-Roland marks the extreme limit. A merely superficial examination is enough to show that these defences existed only on the side to which access would otherwise have been easy, while the height overlooking the river on the other side, which is impregnable by nature, has been left untouched. Here too we find the name Caesar’s Camp given to the relics, a fact of common occurrence all over France, where the great captain was long held in honor. Quatrefages is, however, of opinion that the works are neither Roman, Gallic nor Celtic, and he even arrives by a process of elimination at the conclusion that they were erected by the Iberians, who preceded the Aryans, and have left so deep an impress on all the countries they successively occupied. We do not feel able to accept entirely this hypothesis; but no suggestion of the eminent professor must be overlooked by those who earnestly seek with unbiassed minds to ascertain the truth.
Gregory of Tours relates that at the time of the invasion of the Vandals, the Gabali took refuge with their families in the CASTRUM GREDONENSE, and there, for two years, energetically resisted the invaders.[221] Greze, now a little market town of the department of Lozere, is the CASTRUM of which the old French chronicler speaks, and Dr. Prunieres there collected forty stone hatchets, differing in no material respect from others found in such numbers elsewhere, with flint knives and scrapers, bone stilettos, and millstones, doubtless used for grinding grain, all of which are to the learned French professor proofs of the existence there of a Neolithic station before the historic period.
In the department of Alpes-Maritimes a series of defensive works crown the circle of mountains which rise from the shores of the Mediterranean. These intrenchments certainly date from a remote period, though we cannot assign them to any definite time, and the fact that they have been repaired at different epochs proves that they were successively occupied.[222] They consist principally of circular or elliptical ENCEINTES surrounded by walls of stones without mortar, and they vary in diameter from some 39 to 328 feet. One of the largest is that on the Colline des Mulets, above Monte Carlo.
FIGURE 84
Prehistoric spoon and button found in a lake station at Sutz (Switzerland).
Although the pile-dwellings of Switzerland and of the TERREMARES of Italy would appear to have been in themselves protection enough, their inhabitants did not neglect other means of defence, from which we may gather that they were engaged in constant and terrible struggles. The TERREMARES were generally surrounded by a talus or rampart of earth, with an external fosse which protected the approaches to the dwellings. The rampart of Castione (Parma), which dates from the Bronze age, was even strengthened inside with large timber caissons.[223] In Switzerland, some works recently undertaken to deflect the course of the Aar, on its exit from Lake Bienne, have led to the discovery of a village of the Stone age, with the bridges leading to it and the little forts intended to protect it.[224] As have the neighboring settlements, this station has yielded a great many arrows, hatchets, scrapers, and harpoons. We give an illustration of a curious marrow spoon, and of a round object which seems to have been a button (Fig. 84), as they mark the progress made.
Great Britain is intersected by lines of fortifications of unknown origin, but certainly of extreme antiquity. We may mention Dane’s Dyke, Wandyke, the Devil’s Dyke at Newmarket, and Offa’s Dyke, running from the Bristol Channel to the Dee, and dividing England from Wales. Ancient camps and intrenchments, Sir John Lubbock tells us, crown the greater number of the hills of England. General Pitt-Rivers explored several of these camps in the county of Sussex. Many extend over considerable areas, and all contain numerous worked flints and other relics of prehistoric industry. These relics are met with in great numbers at the base of the intrenchments, so that we may justly conclude that they date from the same epoch.
The most celebrated of these camps is that of Cissbury, three miles north of Worthing. We may also mention that of Hod-Hill in Dorsetshire, which greatly resembles the one at Cissbury, but we will describe the latter in some detail.[225] It is situated on a somewhat lofty plateau of irregular form, its site having been chosen with great skill as one offering great facilities for defence. The earthen ramparts and the fosses protecting them cover an area of sixty acres, and their importance varies according to the relief of the ground; thus the thickness of the walls is very much greater on the eastern side where an attack would have been most fraught with danger; four doors give access to the interior, and on each side of these doors are ruins of rectangular structures strengthening their defence. Archaeologists, however, are of opinion that these redoubts, though their construction is exactly similar to the rest of the fortifications, are of more recent date. In fact Roman tiles have been found amongst the ruins, but these really prove nothing, as every one is agreed that Cissbury was occupied by the Romans after the subjugation of England by them; and the only point at issue is really whether the walls of which the ruins still remain date from the Roman period, or from times prior to their arrival. We ourselves lean to the latter opinion, as drinking-water is absolutely wanting; a very important point, as the Roman generals always made it their first care to pitch their camps near a good water-supply. On the western slope at Cissbury on each side of the ramparts are fifty funnel-shaped depressions, some of which are as much as seventy feet in diameter and twelve feet deep. These holes may have served as refuges, and the larger ones were certainly lived in, as is proved by the charred stones of the hearths and the pieces of charcoal found near them; moreover, Tacitus[226] tells us that the Germans lived in similar habitations. Whatever, however, may have been their ultimate use, these hollows were in the first place dug out with a view to obtaining flints in the marly chalk forming the bill; and recent excavations have revealed the existence of galleries connecting the depressions. When they became later human habitations some of the inside openings were blocked up with lumps of chalk, carefully piled up so as to make entrance extremely difficult, greatly adding to the security of the inmates.
Thirty of these shafts were excavated in succession; and amongst the rubbish of all kinds with which they were filled were found some well cut celts, showing no trace of polish, and some weapons or tools of the Mousterien type. The number of half-finished implements, and the even greater quantity of chips, points to these shafts having formed a centre of manufacture. Many of the implements were made of stag-horn, and amongst them we must mention some picks which, curiously enough, exactly resemble those of Belgium and the south of France.[227] Similar wooden picks are found in the copper mines of the Asturias, in the salt mines of Salzburg, and in a petroleum well recently opened on the frontier between the United States and Canada. In all these localities traces can be made out of ancient mining operations. But to return to Cissbury: from amongst the prehistoric ruins there were also taken, numerous fragments of pottery, not at all like Roman ware, with the bones of the horse, goat, boar, and ox, all still represented in the fauna of England; with oyster-shells, and the shells of both land and sea mollusca, of species still to be found in Great Britain. But no trace has so far been discovered of metals, and neither the flint implements nor the bones of animals have any of the marks of rust so characteristic of the Bronze and Iron ages. Must we not then conclude that these shafts were sunk at a time long prior to the earliest historic period?
The walls of the subterranean galleries of Cissbury bore not only cup-shaped ornaments, strive, and curved or broken lines, recalling those on the megalithic monuments of Scotland and Ireland; but Park Harrison has made out some regular RUNES, or written characters, of which a reproduction was shown at the Paris Exhibition in 1878. This last fact is the more curious, as Sayce discovered in a passage giving access to a cave near Syracuse some characters somewhat similar in form, to which he assigns a proto-Phoenician origin. We may add that certain characters made out at Cissbury, differing but little from the modern letter B or the figure 6, are also found in the most ancient Palmyrian, Copt, and Syrian alphabets. Were this fact completely established, still more, if it were corroborated by other analogous facts, we should in it have a very valuable indication of the relations of England with the most ancient known navigators.
Germany also contains some ancient fortifications, of which the most remarkable are the HEIDENMAUER of Saint Odila, near Hermeskiel, between the Moselle and the Rhine. Huge stones, piled up without cement, form a triple ENCEINTE, but there is nothing to connect these remains with prehistoric times. It is the same with the intrenchments in the Grand Duchy of Posen, the existence of which was announced at a meeting of the Anthropological Society of Berlin.[228] Many of these defensive works, notably those of Potzrow and of Zabnow, bad been erected on piles. In the district between Thorn and the Baltic are numerous mounds of the shape of a truncated cone, the platform of which is surrounded by an embankment some 590 feet in diameter.[229] Near many of these were picked up many broken human bones, mixed together in the greatest confusion with weapon, hatchets, and hammers, resembling Neolithic types. Everything bears witness to the struggles of which these mounds were the scene.
Similar relies of a past still obscure are met with in the south of Europe. Cartailhac has brought into notice the CITANIAS, which are strange fortified towns in Portugal. On the plateau of Mouinho-da-Moura, southwest of Lisbon, were found numerous polished hatchets, associated with shells of marine mollusca and the bones of mammals belonging to species still extant.[230] This station was protected by intrenchments of so great an extent that it has been impossible to examine the whole of them. There are also near the same place several caves, now nearly choked up. One of them was originally a regular tunnel; the cutting leading to the entrance was made of earth and small stones; it contained the bones of animals, some cinders, and four large vases of coarse workmanship. It is difficult to make out what this cave was used for, the great confusion in which the bones lay excluding all idea of its having been a tomb. Ribeiro had already made out at Lycea an intrenched camp protected by clumsily constructed walls. Inside the ENCEINTE he picked up numerous fragments of ornamented pottery, with polished hatchets, shells, and a good many bones of animals. He also made out several sepulchres.[231]
FIGURE 85
General view of the station of Fuente-Alamo.
The prehistoric station of LA MUELA DE CHERT in Maeztrago reminds us of those of Portugal. It is situated on a little eminence, protected on the north and east by the natural escarpment of the plateau, and on other sides by a wall of some height made of stones without mortar. Some foundations of an oval shape, on which doubtless were built the homes of the inhabitants, can be made out in the middle of the ENCEINTE. We can, however, but repeat here what we have said so often elsewhere, that it is impossible to fix the exact date at which these intrenchments were made. The discovery, however, of polished flint hatchets, diorite lance-heads, and a few bones of ruminants and cerviae unknown in Spain in prehistoric times, would appear to point to a very considerable antiquity. Lastly, two young Belgian engineers[232] have lately made out between Almeria and Carthagena a considerable number of prehistoric stations in which can be traced successively the different Stone ages and those of Copper and of Bronze. Several of these stations (Fig. 85) are regular fortified camps, protected by thick stone walls cemented with a thin layer of clay. The fire which destroyed the habitations has left behind, beneath the ashes and cinders, numerous objects, with the aid of which we are able to form a picture of the life led by the men who built the fortifications, and we know that they were agriculturists, for the very stores of grain have been found charred and agglutinated by fire. In the more recent stations flint, which was in the earliest time the one material used, has disappeared and is replaced by the copper, of which a plentiful supply was found in the rich mines riddling the mountains. Excavations have even brought to light the workshop of the metallurgist, with its moulds and vases converted into crucibles, its essays at new forms, its scoriae, and lastly its finished weapons, showing real skill in their production.
Although it is impossible to assign to them a definite date, we must, to make this part of our work complete, say a few words on the earthworks met with in Roumania. A former minister of that principality, M. Odobesco,[233] classes them as VALLA, TUMULI, and CETATI DE PAMENTU or citadels.
The VALLA include important works. One of them cuts across Valachie parallel with the Danube and loses itself in Southern Russia. Another crosses the north of Moldavia and Bessarabia, following a direction convergent with the former. These VALLA, although they are known in the country in which they occur as FOSSES DE TRAJAN, are certainly of earlier date than the Roman occupation, and in fact Roman roads cut across the intrenchments or fosses which have been levelled or covered over to make way for them. Excavations of the large tumuli are not yet sufficiently advanced for us to hazard an opinion about them. The smaller ones, however, are seldom of Roman origin. The funeral vases of calcareous stone which they contain bear witness clearly enough to their destination, and also to the rite with which they were connected.
The CETATI DE PAMENTU are regular earthen fortifications set up within short distances of each other on all the heights overlooking the torrential rivers of Roumania. These intrenchments, generally of round or oval form, are protected by deep fosses, parapets, and palisades. Masses of cinders and burnt earth bear unmistakable evidence to the cause of their destruction. All about, excavations have brought to light coarse pottery, grindstones for crushing grain, stores of millet which had been damaged by the flames, and a few primitively constructed bronze idols. When the vanquished Roumanians were driven from their intrenchments, they had evidently learned to use bronze, but were still, as we have already remarked, unacquainted with iron, as no object in that material has been found, nor does anything bear any trace of rust.
Thus, throughout Europe, man, in the presence of the many dangers surrounding him, endeavored in the very earliest times to protect by similar means his family, his flocks, and his wealth. In America we are able to quote facts of even more importance. The vast territory comprised between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, between the great lakes of Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, is intersected with truly colossal fortifications, almost all of them made entirely of earth. The ancient Americans knew how to protect every height and every delta formed by the junction of two rivers with redoubts, walls, parapets, fosses, and circumvallations. Not without astonishment we make out a regular system of fortresses connected with each other by deep trenches and secret passages, some of them hewn out beneath the beds of rivers, observatories on the heights, and concentric walls, some actually strengthened with casemates protecting the entrances. All these works were constructed by the so-called Mound-Builders, of whose ancestors or of whose descendants absolutely nothing is known.
All the strongholds of the Mound-Builders rise near abundant watercourses, and the best proof that can be given of the intelligence which guided their constructors in their choice of sites, is the fact of the number of flourishing cities such as Newark, Portsmouth, Cincinnati, Saint Louis, Frankfort, and New-Madrid, etc., which were built upon the ruins of various earthworks.
It would take us too long merely to enumerate all the ancient fortifications still existing in North America. Moreover they all resemble each other so much that the description of a few of them is really all that is needed to prove their importance.
Fort Hill (Fig. 5, p. 39) rises from an eminence overlooking a little river called Paint Creek; the walls vary in height from eight to fifteen feet, and exceed thirty feet in thickness.[234] Several doors facilitate entrance, and one of them leads to a square ENCIENTE, the walls of which have been almost entirely destroyed. This enclosure probably contained the homes of the people, which may have been mere cabins of adobes or sun-burnt bricks, or buts covered with rushes, interlaced branches, or the skins of animals; on this point we are reduced to guesswork. In the centre of the principal enclosure can be made out, in almost every case, several much smaller enclosures, each containing in their turn one or more mounds. Some think these were consecrated to religious rites, but this is a mere conjecture, for nothing is really known of the form of government or of the religion of the Mound-Builders.
Forest trees have grown up on these abandoned ruins, succeeding other vegetable growths; the huge girth of the decaying trunks proving their longevity. Man, impelled by motives we cannot fathom, had abandoned the districts where everything bears witness to his power and intelligence, and the vigorous vegetation of nature once more has it all its own way.
The most remarkable group of prehistoric fortifications in North America is perhaps that near Newark, in the valley of the Scioto. It includes an octagonal ENCEINTE eighty acres in area, a square ENCEINTE of twenty acres, with two others, one twenty the other thirty acres in extent. The walls of the great circle are still twelve feet high by fifty feet wide at the base. They are protected by an interior fosse seven feet deep by thirty-five feet wide. According to measurements carefully made by Colonel Whittlesey,[235] the total area covered by these intrenchments is no less than twelve square miles, and the length of the mounds exceeds two miles. The large entrances protected by mounds thirty-five feet high, the avenues leading to them which are regular labyrinths, the quaintly shaped mounds — one, for instance, represents the foot of a gigantic bird — all combine to strike the visitor with astonishment. We give a representation (Fig. 86) of a group, not unlike that we have just described, which is situated at Liberty (Ohio), and includes two circles and one square. The diameter of the great circle is 1,700 feet, and it encloses an area of forty acres, whilst that of the smaller ENCEINTE IS 500 feet; the area of the square, each side of which measures 1,080 feet, is twenty-seven acres. The walls are not strengthened by any ditch, and, contrary to general usage, the earth of which they are made was dug out from the inside of the ENCIENTE itself. We may also mention Old Fort (Greenup County, Kentucky, successively described by Caleb Atwater, Squier, and J. H. Lewis. It is situated forty feet above the river, and the total length of the walls exceeds 3,175 feet. Six entrances give access to it, and in the centre rises a mound representing some animal, a bear probably, measuring more than 105 feet. Several small mounds, beneath which were found human bones, cluster about the larger one.
FIGURE 86
Group at Liberty (Ohio).
FIGURE 87
Trenches at Juigalpa (Nicaragua).
We must not omit to name an extraordinary system of intrenchments at Juigalpa, in Nicaragua, which so far as I know is quite unique. This is a series of trenches extending for several miles (Fig. 87), varying in width from nine and a half to thirteen feet; at equal distances are oval reservoirs, the longest axis of which measures as much as seventy-eight feet. In each reservoir are two or four mounds, probably serving as watch-towers. We know nothing either of the people who erected these singular structures or of the enemy from whom they formed a protection. Nor can anything be guessed as to the way in which the defence was conducted. All is involved in obscurity, and at every turn we are compelled to repeat that prehistoric studies are weighted with uncertainty, long and arduous study being necessary to bring ever so little order into the chaos in which everything connected with them is involved.
We must cursorily refer to some other fortifications which really scarcely belong to our subject, though certain archaeologists claim for them a prehistoric origin. We refer to the vitrified forts, which are strange structures in which stones, such as granite and gneiss, quartzite and basalt, have been subjected to a heat so intense as to produce vitrification.
These vitrified forts are ENCEINTES, generally of round or elliptical form, carefully erected where they were most needed for defence, and protected by one or more ramparts.[236] The ramparts all bear traces of vitrification, more or less complete, which has, so to speak, cemented them together. The vitrification is very unequal, being complete in some parts and scarcely noticeable in others. It is evident that the builders did not know how to direct their fire uniformly.
Ever since 1777 vitrified forts have been known in Scotland, and until 1837 they were supposed to exist nowhere else. About that time, however, Professor Zippe called attention to similar ruins in Bohemia, and later it was announced that discoveries of the same kind had been made in various parts of France, Denmark, and Norway. Virchow speaks of the SCHLAKEN WALLE, or ramparts of vitrified scoria, near Kern[237] and Schaafhausen, and gave an account of them at a meeting of German naturalists at Ratisbon. It would be easy to multiply instances. Vitrified walls are known in the Puy-de-Dome, in which the facing is of clay, and draught flues, for regulating and fanning the flames, have been made out. At Castel-Sarrazin is a camp refuge with similar dispositions,[238] and recently Daubree presented to the Academie des Sciences a piece of porphyry artificially vitrified from the prehistoric ENCEINTE of Hartmannswiller Kopf in Upper Alsace.[239]
It is in Scotland, however, that are situated the most remarkable vitrified forts. A few years ago no less than forty-four were counted. The most celebrated are those of Barry Hill and Castle Spynie in Invernesshire, Top-O-Noth in Aberdeen, and a small fort which rises from a lofty rock in the midst of the Strait of Bute. Vitrified cairns also occur in the Orkney Islands, notably on the little isle of Sanday, but the most interesting structures of the kind are Craig Phoedrick and Ord Hill of Kissock, which rise up like huge pillars on the hills at the entrance of Moray Firth, at a distance of three miles from each other.[240]
Craig Phoedrick is now covered with a luxuriant vegetation of broom, furze, and fern, with groves of firs and larches, amongst which the explorer makes his way with difficulty to the fortifications, or rather to the piles of massive blocks to which that name has been given. These blocks form an acropolis of oval form, the upper part of which is a flat terrace encircling a central basin some six and a half to nine and a half feet deep, which may be compared to the craters of the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne. The sides of the mound are strewn with cyclopean blocks of vitrified granite, which evidently originally formed part of the fortifications. It is on the eastern side, overlooking the valley of the Ness, that the buildings are of the greatest importance; two terraces can be made out, the lower projecting beyond the upper, forming a double series of almost perpendicular fortifications, constructed of vitrified blocks cemented together with thin layers of mortar, spread without any attempt at regularity. The blocks form, with the mortar, a conglomerate so compact that when struck with a hammer they break without separating. Examination of fragments under the microscope prove that they have gone through important mineralogical transformations, under the influence of what must have been an extremely high temperature. The heat must have been indeed intense which could cause mica to disappear entirely, and feldspar to melt almost completely.
The hill known as Ord Hill of Kissock is crowned, as is Craig Phoedrick, with ruins still standing, but the vegetation about them is so dense and thorny that it is difficult to make out the condition of the remains. The ruins, which can only be seen from one side, appear however to have formed part of fortifications, dating from the same time and serving the same purpose as those of Craig Phoedrick. Were they forts? There is certainly no sign of their having been used as habitations. Or were they, as some archaeologists are disposed to think, beacon houses used for warning the people of the approach of the Norman pirates or Scandinavian Vikings, whose depredations were not discontinued until the eighth century of the Christian era? Hypotheses are always easy, but proofs of these hypotheses are difficult to find, and we confess we have none to bring forward.[241]
Passing to France, we find the greater number of vitrified forts in the Departement de la Creuse. At Chateauvieux is an ENCEINTE of oval form, 416 feet wide at its broadest part.[242] An earthwork, 22 feet wide at the base, serves as foundation to a wall, the outer and inner portions of which consist of small granite stones, arranged in regular layers. The space between the two series of small stones is filled in with a sheet of melted granite, some twenty-four inches wide, resting on calcareous tufa. The whole mass is completely vitrified, and regular geodes or nodules lined with crystals and draped with pendent drops of melted rock have been produced.
The ancient fortress of Ribandelle, of circular form, rises above the Creuse, opposite Chateauvieux. It was successively occupied by the Celts, the Romans, and the Visigoths, but we are unable to fix the date of its erection or the name of the people who built it. There remain but a few ruins at the present day, but we can make out in them the same mode of construction as that followed at Chateauvieux. The walls are faced with unhewn stones, the outer side of which still retains a natural appearance, while the inner is corroded and disintegrated. In the wall itself, separated from the facings by beds of peat mould, are great blocks of vitrified granite. The traces of the action of fire are specially noticeable in the upper part of the walls, so that they were evidently finished when the fusion took place.
The site of the furnace in these forts is difficult to determine. It was evidently not situated under any of the blocks, for the earthworks on which they rest retain no traces of the action of fire. Nor was it situated at the side, for the outer facings have retained alike their original form and consistency. Nor can the furnace have been lit on the blocks, as heat exercises its action by radiating in every direction. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the fire was spread with the aid of spaces left in the inside of the construction at various points, for the vitrified mass is divided into blocks, about nine and three fourths feet long, at very short distances from each other.
These few examples will be enough to give some idea of the strange vitrified forts. Many of them retain traces of Roman. occupation. The Gueret Museum possesses a fragment from the Ribandelle walls in which a Roman tile is completely imbedded; and M. Thuot picked up other tiles in a similar condition amongst the ruins. This is a very decided proof that the vitrification took place after the arrival of the conquerors of Gaul. The weapons and tools discovered would appear to confirm this idea, and to suggest similar explanations of vitrification elsewhere. If so, we shall have. to admit that vitrified forts date from the earliest centuries of the Christian era, and are not prehistoric at all. We have, however, noticed them here on account of the grave doubts in the matter, and because they furnish a striking and valuable illustration of the relations existing from the most remote tunes between widely separated races, and maintained until the present time. In no other way can we account for the practice of the extremely difficult and complicated operation of the vitrification of bard rocks in districts so far apart as Norway and Scotland, Germany and the midlands of France.
The more we think of the difficulties vitrification presents, the greater is our astonishment. How was the fusion achieved of elements so refractory alike in their structure and in the resistance offered by accumulated masses of material? By what processes was heat brought up to the 1300 degrees necessary for the fusion of granite? The incineration and fusion of the materials of which the vitrified forts are made, especially the granite ones of La Creuse and the Cotes du Nord, bear witness, says Daubree, to a surprising skill and knowledge of the management of fire in those who burned them, but these qualities were manifested also in extremely ancient metallurgical operations. It is quite impossible to suppose the vitrification to have been the result of a conflagration. No fire, whether accidental or the work of an incendiary, could be powerful enough to produce such results. The use of petroleum in the most terrible conflagrations of our own time — those of the Commune in 1871, for instance — did calcine and disintegrate stone, but I know of no case of vitrification.
The Keramic Museum of Sevres contains several specimens which present very notable differences to each other. Those from Chateau-Gontier are formed of very close-grained quartzite granite of a greenish color streaked with black. The conglomerate welding there together is a vitrified scoria full of very small bubbles made by the escape of gas which had not had sufficient strength to get out. The block from Sainte-Suzanne (Mayenne) consists of quartz mixed with half calcined grains of feldspar, bleached by the action of fused glass, which once introduced filled up as it congealed all the vacant spaces with a vitreous substance of light greenish-white color. The fractures are green and bright, and are dotted with white points, which are all that is left of the stones after their disintegration in the grip of a heat that was alike intense and rapid in its action. The fragments brought from Scotland differ from those just described. They consist of small pieces of granite completely merged in a thick paste with which they form the mass, the whole breaking together when it does break; and the melted matter seldom has any bubbles in it.[243]
The process employed in cementing the materials of the vitrified forts was then perfectly unique. The processes employed to obtain the necessary heat varied according to circumstances and according to the nature of the materials used. At Sainte-Suzanne and at La Courbe marine salt was used as a flux. Captain Prevot[244] thinks that the walls were smeared with a coating of clay, and that as in the baking of bricks spaces were left between so as to produce more intense heat. M. de Montaiglon is of opinion that the buildings were in the first instance erected without the use of any calcareous or argillaceous material, and that glass in a state of fusion was poured over them afterwards, this glass consolidating them and forming with them one indestructible mass. M. Thuot seems much disposed to share this last opinion, but he thinks that some chemical materials such as soda or potash were also used. Yet one other possible solution may be mentioned, a solution which is becoming more and more generally accepted, namely that the granite was not after all really melted, but that the vitrification should either be attributed to the fusion of the argillaceous mass, which has been subjected to an igneous transformation, such as that which often takes place in furnaces for baking bricks and in lime-kilns.[245]
Whatever explanation we may accept, however, the processes employed certainly bear witness to a much more advanced state of civilization than was acquired in the earliest ages of humanity. We have been led by the great interest and mystery of the subject to dwell longer on it than we intended, and we must hasten to return to prehistoric times with a determination not to transgress again.
Fortifications are a proof of combined action leading to a common end; they imply social organization, chiefs to command, workmen to obey. A recent discovery enables us to form a very accurate picture of prehistoric men gathered together not only for purposes of defence, but in a society already rich, industrious, and, if we may so speak, learning to cultivate the arts of peace.
The AEgean Sea has ever been the theatre of igneous phenomena, and the three little islands of Thera, Therasia, and Aspronisi, which shut in the Bay of Santorin, are built up chiefly of volcanic materials.[246] In 1573 an eruptive cone suddenly appeared; in 1707 the inhabitants of Santorin saw rise up a short distance from their shores a rock that increased in size for several days and then suddenly split up. This splitting up was succeeded by a great eruption of incandescent materials; an eruption which lasted for no less than five years, forming at the end of that time an island some 400 feet high by 3,279 feet in circumference. In 1866, after many violent shocks of earthquake, the ground was rent asunder on this island and masses of volcanic matter were belched forth, whilst on the other side of the island the soil sank to such a degree that canoes were used to get to houses which but the day before were nine feet above the sea-level. This eruption went on until 1870, and the quantity of scoriae vomited forth during its continuance welded three islets, which had hitherto been separate, to the principal island, of which they now form part. On entering the Bay of Santorin we see on every side banks of lava, beds of scoriae, and piles of cinders of a purplish-gray color rising in cliffs to a height of more than 1,312 feet. All these materials are the result of innumerable eruptions, and the central crater of the volcano is probably situated about the middle of the bay. It is supposed that at one time a conical mountain, from 1,958 to 2,600 feet high, rose where soundings now give a depth of water of over 1,300 feet. A sudden break up of the mountain probably produced this abyss, and formidable eruptions have led to the pouring forth of immense quantities of pumice-stone. The three islets mentioned above would be the remains of the old central cone, and a bed of pumice-stone from 98 to 131 feet thick is spread over the whole of their surface, telling of a violent cataclysm of which neither history nor tradition has preserved the memory.
The letters of Pliny the Younger[247] say that the eruption of Vesuvius which caused the destruction of Portici lasted five days, and we know that the houses are covered with a uniformly distributed bed of pumice-stone some thirteen feet thick, and of cinders about three feet thick. Everything points to the conclusion that a very similar catastrophe overtook Santorin; there too whole villages were buried beneath cinders, stones, and molten lava, belched forth by a volcano in action; there too men were the witnesses and the victims of the eruption, as is proved by an accidental circumstance which took place some twenty-three years after.[248]
The removal of the POUZZOLANA, so called after the volcanic ashes of Pozzuoli in Italy for the works on the Isthmus of Suez, necessitated important excavations, and the cuttings revealed the existence of dwellings which had been bidden away from the light of day for many centuries. The masses of rubbish hiding these prehistoric ruins were some sixty-five feet high, and consisted chiefly of volcanic ashes piled up, for some accidental reason, in comparatively modern times. Beneath the POUZZOLANA a thin layer of humus contains fragments of pottery of Hellenic origin; which marks the close of the historic period, and covers over the mass of pumiceous tufa vomited out by the volcano. It was in this tufa, which is eight feet thick, that the first signs of buildings were discovered. Further excavation brought to light two houses with doors, windows, and bearing walls. In one of these houses there were five different rooms. Other discoveries rapidly succeeded each other, alike in the island of Therasia and at Acrotiri, the principal island, which has given its name to the group. The plan of these houses is an irregular parallelogram, the angles of which are rounded and the sides more or less curved. This arrangement differs greatly from that adopted in Greece as well as from that in use at Therasia after the time of the volcanic eruptions. The houses too are quite different in their mode of construction. The walls consist of great blocks of lava placed one above the other, without any trace of cement or of lime, and are merely kept in place by a reddish earth mixed with chopped straw or marine algae. Large branches of olive or cypress trees, still with the bark on, are imbedded in the masonry. These pieces of wood, the size of which varies considerably, were probably added to give the necessary solidity to the walls in the numerous earthquakes, the disastrous effects of which were only too well known to the ancient inhabitants of Santorin. It is curious and interesting to note the use of the same expedient among the inhabitants of the islands of the Archipelago who are still exposed to the same danger. The doors and windows are clumsily arched, and the roof seems to have been a low vault. It was made of stones and coated with clay and supported by the trunks of olive trees, the charred remains of which lay upon the floors of the crushed homes. These trunks show no sign of having been touched with metal tools; not a metal nail or clamp has been found, and we cannot but conclude that the remains belong to the age when stone alone was employed.
The inside walls were not glazed or decorated in any way, except in one instance, that of a house at Acrotiri, from which the rubbish has been cleared away, revealing on the walls a layer of lime on which was some colored ornamentation which still retained an extraordinary brilliancy when it was discovered.
In all the houses and in every room of each were found beneath the tufa burying them masses of lava and volcanic scoriae, forming a most eloquent witness of the cause of their destruction. Near one of the houses of Therasia is a little cylindrical structure, about three feet high; which cannot have been a well, as it rests directly on impermeable lava, and was certainly not a cistern, as it is too small for that. May it, as some think, have been an altar? We cannot tell, and though the religious sentiment was probably no more absent among these primitive races than it is among the barbarous peoples of our own day, it does not do to express an opinion in the absence of positive proof.
Successive excavations have yielded a number of objects which throw a new light upon the manners and customs of the inhabitants. Terra-cotta vases are more numerous than anything else (Fig. 88), and among them preponderate large yellow vessels capable of holding about one hundred quarts. Most of them have a clumsy brim, and a rough attempt has been made at ornamentation by the potter with his fingers on the damp clay. Other vases of finer clay, colored red or yellow, are covered with ornaments and graceful arabesques; the garlands of fruit and flowers are often of remarkably beautiful workmanship. Cups with well-shaped rounded handles, made of some kind of red ferruginous earth, others of gray material, were picked up in all the houses. These various vessels were used for many different purposes; some to cook food, the marks of the hearth being still on them, whilst others retained some of the chopped straw with which the domestic animals had evidently been fed. The most curious of all are those which are supposed to represent a woman; the front part projecting and surmounted by a narrow neck bent backwards, with two brown prominences supposed to stand for breasts, and dots round the upper part representing a necklace, while ear-rings are indicated by elliptical bands of different colors. We shall have to refer again to these curious vases when we speak of the discoveries made at Troy; we need only add now that the pottery found at Santorin differs completely, alike in form and ornamentation, from the Greek, Phoenician, and Etruscan specimens, of which the museums of Europe contain so many. They are evidently therefore not of foreign origin, but of native manufacture. The absence of clay in the island of Santorin has thrown some doubt on this, however, but the researches of M. Fouque have revealed the former existence of a large valley, at the base of the principal cone, which valley ran down to the sea-shore near the island of Aspronisi; and in which probably was found the clay which the potters of the district soon learned to turn to account.
FIGURE 88
Vases found at Santorin.
With these vases were found some troughs for holding crushed grain, and lava discs very much like those still in use among the weavers of the Archipelago to stretch the woof of their tissues; skilfully graduated lava weights, the correlation of which is very evident, as they weigh 8, 24, and 96 ounces; a flint arrow-head and a saw of the same material with regular teeth; together with a great variety of other objects, including many obsidian arrows and knives, reminding us in their shape of those characteristic of the Stone age in North Europe.
Two rings of gold beaten very thin, and a little copper saw with no trace of any alloy, are, so far, the only metal objects found in the excavations. The origin of the former, moreover, is very uncertain, and there has been much discussion as to where the rings came from. In spite, however, of all the gaps in the evidence about them, there remains no doubt that the inhabitants of Santorin were farther advanced in civilization than the Lake dwellers of Switzerland, the builders of the TERREMARE of Italy, or the Iberians of the south of Spain, who were very probably their contemporaries; and we cannot refrain from expressing our admiration of the wonderful progress made by the inhabitants of the little group of volcanic islands under notice.
Before the catastrophe which overwhelmed them, Santorin was covered with comfortable and solidly built houses. Men knew how to till the ground, and gathered in crops of cereals, among which barley was the most abundant, then millet, lentils, peas, coriander, and anise; they had learned to domesticate animals, as is proved beyond a doubt by the number of bones of sheep and goats; they kept dogs to guard their flocks, and horses to aid in agricultural work; they knew how to weave stuffs, to grind grain, to extract the oil from olives, and even to make cheese, if we may give that name to the pasty white stuff found at the bottom of a vase by Dr. Nomicos. They were acquainted with the arch, and they used durable and brilliant colors. The copper saw is an example of the first efforts of the natives at metallurgy; the gold and obsidian which were foreign to the island bear witness to commercial relations with people at a distance. They loved art, as proved by the shape of their vases and the ornamentation on many of them, which is really often worthy of the best days of Greece. All around we see signs appearing as it were suddenly of a civilization, the origin and tendencies of which are alike still unknown.
But one human skeleton has so far been found in Santorin, and that is of an inhabitant who had evidently been overtaken in his flight and crushed beneath the burning scoriae from the volcano. This man was of medium height, and is supposed to have been between forty and forty-eight years old. The bones of the pelvis are firmly consolidated, and the teeth are worn with mastication.
Let us endeavor to guess at the period when the people of Santorin lived. De Longperier tells us that vases similar to those left by them are represented on the tomb of Rekmara amongst the presents offered to Thothmes III., who lived in the eighth century B.C., but if so the people of Santorin appear to have borrowed nothing in their intercourse with Egypt. The first invasion of Greece by the Phoenicians is supposed to have been in the fifteenth century B.C., but the buildings, the pottery, and the various implements of Therasia and Acrotiri differ essentially from those of the Phoenicians, who, moreover, from the earliest times, used metals. Must we not therefore conclude that the catastrophe which overwhelmed Santorin took place before the fifteenth century B.C.? Conjectures as to the date of the fatal eruption, however plausible, are of no use in anything relating to the origin of the people, or the time of their first occupation of the island. On these points all is still hopeless confusion, and we must wait for further discoveries before we can hope to come to any conclusions in the matter.
We have gone back to the very earliest days of man upon the earth; we have shown that he was the contemporary of the mammoth and the rhinoceros, of the cave-lion and the cave-bear; we have seen him crouching in the deep recesses of his cave and fighting the battle of life with no weapon but a few scarcely sharpened flints, leading an existence infinitely more wretched than the animals about him. Not without emotion have we watched our remote ancestors in their ceaseless struggle for existence; not without emotion have we seen them gradually growing in intelligence and energy, and attaining by slow degrees to a certain amount of civilization. Santorin is a striking and brilliant proof of their progress, and we shall appreciate this progress yet more when we have examined the ruins piled up on the hill of Hissarlik. There we shall close this portion of our work, for from the time when the buildings of which these remains were the relics met their doom, the use of metals, copper, bronze, gold, silver, and iron became general. History began to be written, and it is her task to tell us of the migrations of races, the early efforts of historic, races, the foundation of empires. In a word, the prehistoric age was over; that of self-conscious portraiture was now to begin.
A few years ago I was on the ancient Hellespont and my fellow-travellers, grouped about the deck of our vessel, were trying to make out on the receding coast of Asia the sites of Troy and of the tumuli which were then still supposed to have been the tombs of Achilles, Patrokles, and Hector, but which are now, thanks to the able researches of Dr. Schliemann, known to belong to a comparatively modern epoch. The streams, bearing the ever memorable names of Simois and Scamander, were also eagerly pointed out by the watchers, recalling the words of Lamartine:
Le nautonnier voguant sur les flots du Bosphore Des yeux cherchait encore
Le palais de Priam et les tours d’Ilium.
Great indeed is the privilege of genius, immortalizing all that it touches; for it must be pointed out that Troy was never an important town, and the war in which it disappeared was in reality but one of the incessant struggles between the petty princes of Greece and Asia.
When I visited the East, scholars were not at all agreed as to the site of the town which was so long besieged by the Greeks; and certain sceptical spirits even went so far as to deny that there ever was such a person as Homer at all, or that if there were, he wrote the